Hollow
by Swiper. No swiping
Summary: The world is a very ugly place.


She opens her eyes, expecting something familiar. But all she sees is a void. Negative space. Where he should be, there is nothing. Where she expects to see his sleeping face, his bulky form crumpled in the bed, there is nothing, save for a sweaty indentation in the sheets.

Things change.

She sits up in bed slowly, the sheets still clinging to her as she rises. She's wet, all over. Covered with a fine film of sweat. The season is summer. The nights are hot. The days are even hotter. It's already above a comfortable temperature outside.

She hears what she thinks is a television on somewhere in the house. The bathroom door is shut, but the light is on. She has to pee.

So she gets up, moves herself out of bed, to start her daily routine. Her bladder feels tense; she can feel the urine sloshing around inside of her as she walks and it makes her queasy. All that anticipation. The pressure building up.

Curious, she knocks on the door. No response.

She jiggles the handle. No response.

The door swings open when she pushes it.

The bathroom is empty but the light is on. The window is open. There is no breeze blowing in, but she's suddenly assailed with the noise of traffic moving by. And the stench of hot tar.

She stares at herself in the mirror. Pink fur a mess. Hair stiff, thrown in different directions. She frowns at herself. The fur on her face is matted with sweat. She was pressing her face into the pillow again. Maybe she was crying.

It doesn't matter.

Digs for gold in her nose, and comes back with a sizeable amount of snot, thin as grape skin. She can taste charcoal in her mouth. She wonders what it is, really.

She wonders where he is, too. Somewhere in the house.

The mirror image hypnotizes her. Distracts her from her routine. She suddenly is overcome with a strange urge to take off all her clothes. So she does. Slips off her nighty, pulling it over her head. The world turns bright satiny pink, then reverts back to normal. Her breasts jiggle free and anti-cyclonic. She watches them in the mirror.

She spreads her legs and stares at her vulva. Her clitoris is engorged with blood and sticks out, but only slightly. A little bit of fluid leaks out from the tract. Probably leftover from the night before. Semen, maybe. She doesn't bother to look at it.

She thinks: Wouldn't that have dried by now?

She doesn't know how she feels. She finds the birth control pills in her top drawer, the case already open. She's still on white. She has a little while to go until she reaches the shit pill. The shit-hits-the-fan pill.

She picks today's out. Walks over to the toilet. Drops it in. It drowns, not making any effort to swim. Then she sits on the toilet, and pisses. Long overdue. She stifles the need to groan. Then she stifles the need to laugh.

Then it's over, and she gets up. Stares at the yellow urine/water. The little white pill stuck at the bottom. And she smiles, as she flushes the toilet.

And it all disappears.

She stares at her breasts in the mirror again. Her hands reach up to hold them. Pinching her nipples with her thumbs and forefingers. She finds her slip that she discarded, puts it back on.

Walks out of the bathroom, finds a pair of non-descript panties, slides them on. The bathroom light is still on, the window still open. She doesn't care. She walks out of the bedroom, down the hallway to the living room. The noise from the television gets louder.

_"…working on fixing the tornado damage out here. It's going to be a costly project, I'm sure. Hopefully we don't get any more storms soon or…"_

She tunes it out. Stares around the room instead. It's cooler in here. The ceiling fan is on. The skylights are all opened, too. The room is joined to the kitchenette, and all its windows are open.

Mixing protein powder into his morning coffee is our hero, Sonic the Hedgehog.

He's wearing his Alpha Sigma Phi t-shirt. Which does nothing to hide his unnatural looking muscles. He looks up from his concoction.

"Hey sexy mama," he says, walking over to her, and now she can see that he's _only _wearing his Alpha Sigma Phi t-shirt.

"Got time for a quickie?"

His tone is brusque and weird. He gently guides his hands around her hips and puts his lips on her nose, making a very slow trail down.

He smells like Axe. And yeast infections.

She sniffs, disgusted, pulls away. And then he pulls away, all tense.

"What the fuck's wrong with you?" his voice is already loud. She cringes, says nothing.

"God, you're such a bitch sometimes. It's a wonder I even keep you around."

What, she thinks, just because I don't want to have sex with you 24/7?

With all the shit you put me through, she thinks, it's a wonder I even fuck you at all.

But instead she says: "I'm sorry, Sonic. I'm just really disgusting right now. I don't feel comfortable. That's all."

And he goes back to smirking his stupid fucking gluttonous smirk. "Well then, why don't we shower together? We can get dirtier before we get clean."

Fallout.

Doesn't matter.

"Let me get something to eat first," she says, staring at the television. Footage of a cloud spinning above a town, air raid sirens blaring. Suddenly it begins reaching towards the ground, a giant worm floating in the air.

Like a finger of God, she thinks. Judgment.

He comes up behind her, uncomfortably close. She can smell that infected stench again. He presses his dick up against her ass crack and she can feel that it's already rock hard. She represses the urge to vomit.

"Scary, isn't it. But don't worry babe, I'll protect you," and he stops talking to nibble on her ear.

She thinks: I hate you. I hate everything about you.

But she says, entirely in monotone: "Isn't your coffee getting cold?"

He mutters: _cunt_, and walks back to the kitchen, probably fuming. She can tell; he kicks one of the barstools he made her buy and it smacks into the island. Probably dents the drawers.

She thinks: I hope I get to keep the house.

She walks over to the couch and puts her hands on it, leaning with her weight on her arms. She just wants to be away from him for a little while. She's worried he might act out.

Then he walks past her, sits on the couch. Still fuming. He picks up the remote, changes the channel to some stupid teenage show. A gaggle of nubile young women in revealing bathing suits dance on a beach somewhere. The camera focuses on their breasts. Cut to some monkey grinning, his fur brown and his teeth white, saliva dripping out of his mouth and onto his microphone.

"Aw yeah," Sonic moans, sipping his coffee. She wonders if he's touching himself.

In complete silence, she turns and walks to the kitchen. She fixes herself some toast and scrambled eggs. She wonders if she's pregnant yet.

All the mothers I know, she thinks, they say they were able to tell. Something about it just felt right to them.

But she's not sure.

"We're out of eggs," she semi-yells, from the kitchen at the back of Sonic's head. "And milk."

"So what do you want me to do about it?"

"It's Sunday. No bus. I need your car."

"You need my car for nothing. _I'm _the only one who gets to drive my car."

"Sonic, I can drive. Perfectly fine."

"Say that all you want but I don't let no one touch my car. Only I get to drive it."

_Fuck you_, she mouths. "Okay. Would you come with me to the grocery store then?"

"I had a busy day yesterday. I want to take it easy today, not go anywhere. Just make do."

"But Sonic."

"But fuck off, cunt."

She sighs. "What do you want me to do?"

Using sex as a bartering method is not healthy. She knows that. But he'll fall for it every time, so she keeps doing it.

She's doing it now, right there on the couch. Tastes pungent, like urine. She represses the need to gag. His crotch smells fetid, and she's trying so hard not to gag. He's moaning and making noises, and all she wants to do his beat the shit out of him, though she knows she never could in a million years. She just closes her eyes and counts, waiting until it's over.

And when it's all over, she gets up, silently, walks to the sink and spits it out. Washes her mouth out under the running tap.

"Did you swallow?" he asks.

"Yeah, I swallowed," she says. "I just need some water, okay? Doing that hurts my throat."

"Bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch," he says from the couch. He's not even looking at her. She puts a hand on her lower stomach– or, at least, where she expects her uterus is.

"You'll take me to the grocery store, right?"

No response.

"Sonic? You promised."

"Okay. Jesus. Just leave me alone."

She walks back to her food, begins to eat finally. The scrambled eggs are lukewarm, the toast already cold. She doesn't really care anymore. Her throat is still sore. Not gonorrhea sore, just recently invaded.

She prays to god that she's pregnant.

She cleans her plate, washes it in the sink. Sonic says nothing. Doesn't even look at her. She walks back to the bathroom and turns the shower on. Watches the water spray out of the head. She's reminded, briefly, of Sonic's dick. And she gags.

She slips out of her clothes again, not looking at herself in the mirror this time. Steps into the shower.

The grocery store is only up the street. His uncooperative behavior is just his douchebag nature. She lathers her fur slowly, taking her time. Pouring soap all over her body. Trying to get his stench off of her.

And she gets out of the shower and dries herself off.

If I leave him now, she thinks, all my hard work won't mean shit.

Just a little bit longer, she thinks, just hang in there. It'll be over soon.

She steps back into the bedroom. He's there, fixing his baseball cap backwards over his ears. He's put on some pants and she's thankful for it.

"Get dressed," he commands, grabbing his keys and his wallet. She puts on a dress: no bra. Slides on her dirty panties from the night before. It's a trip to the grocery store. No one's going to care. Grabs her purse.

He's scowling all the way out to the car. "Didn't want to go anywhere today," he says in a whiny tone. Acting like a little kid. Immature, per usual.

His car is a white Camaro, and Sonic cherishes it more than he does her. It used to make her resent him a little more, but now she's come to realize that the Camaro doesn't talk back to him. The Camaro doesn't need to be told to take birth control. The Camaro doesn't ever say no.

Everything is like an accessory to Sonic the Hedgehog. If it doesn't suit him, he'll get rid of it.

And when I have the baby, she thinks, he'll get rid of me.

But the baby will still be there, she thinks, and his life will be ruined.

Sonic unlocks it, and they get in. He turns the key in the ignition. Avenged Sevenfold comes on the radio. All screaming bullshit into a microphone.

He revs his engine and out of the driveway they go, driving down the street to Mission, which will take them to the grocery store.

She looks at him. He's still scowling. His knuckles are tense on the steering wheel, his unnaturally large biceps bulging, stretching the sleeves of his t-shirt.

She rolls her eyes. "C'mon, Sonic. It's just a trip to the grocery store. It's not like I'm asking you for much."

The car slows to a stop, idling in front of a stoplight. "That's not the point," Sonic says, gritting his teeth. "I make all the money for this household. Me. And today is my only day off. I should be able to spend it how I want."

"If you just let me take your car, then you could've stayed home. I could've driven myself."

He growls. "But it's _my_ car. Not _your_ car. When _you_ make enough money to get your _own_ car, then you can drive _yourself_ in _your _car. This is _my_ car."

"And I'm _your_ girlfriend, Sonic," she groans. "I'm not about to steal your car. Or fuck it up."

Avenged Sevenfold still blaring from the radio, talking about ripping some bitch's heart out and eating it. "That's right. You're my girlfriend. And because I make all the money in the fucking household, you should fucking listen to me."

She doesn't say anything. Just breathes in deep. Waiting for it.

"I mean, for fuck's sake. I tell you to go on the pill because I'm not going to wear condoms anymore. And Jesus, I have to fucking remind you to take your pills? If anything crossed your thick fucking skull. Don't you know what a baby would do to me?"

Breathes out. Still waiting.

"And you keep bitching and bitching about all this shit. Why can't you drive my car. Why can't we not have sex. You hurt my throat. Bitch bitch bitch. If it's not one thing, something else will crawl up your snatch and I'll have to listen to more of your fucking whining."

"Sonic–"

"No you _listen _to me, you cunt. I'm the man of the house. I make all the dough. You don't do shit. It's time you learned your fucking place."

"Who are you?"

The car rolls into a left-turn lane.

"Excuse me?"

She looks at him. He looks at her, scowling.

She's just bewildered.

"Who are you?"

"Yeah I heard you the first time. What the fuck are you on?"

"No, really," she says, reaching out to touch his face. "You've changed so much. I don't even recognize you anymore."

He doesn't say anything. Just stares at her. Like he's slowly beginning to realize something.

She doesn't say anything. Her hand slides off his face, retracts, falls on her lap. She turns and stares at the

They turn into the grocery store parking lot, in silence. He stops right in front of the door, doesn't turn off the engine.

"Get out. Get out of my fucking car."

"Sonic," she pleads with all the emotion removed.

"I said _get out_ you bitch. Before you make me do something I'll regret." His knuckles are still tense on the wheel, starting to shake.

She says nothing, just stares at his hands. Then she pushes the car door open, gets out. Presses the door back in, too gently to actually close it.

The white Camaro suddenly jolts forward, zooming through the parking lot. She stands, following it with her eyes, watching him drive around to the street and turn right, disappear into traffic.

And he's gone.

She turns away, looks at the grocery store. A garishly colored building with a neon sign tacked on; shaped like a green parrot wearing a sombrero. Trade name: Pajaro's. It all screams ethnic like nothing else.

Standing next to her is a heavily pregnant mouse, wearing a really small shirt so as to accentuate her distended stomach. She holds a sign reading: Expecting three more on the way. Anything helps. God BLESS.

She looks at the mouse. "I'm pregnant too," she says.

The mouse looks at her, eyes falling to her stomach. "Uh, fuck. Congratulations. You certainly don't look it," she mutters, shaking her sign slightly so as to draw her attention to it.

"Well, I just got pregnant today."

One of the mouse's eyebrows rises. "I didn't think they made pregnancy tests work that quick."

And in response she smiles, beatific. "No tests needed. I just _know_."

The mouse woman inches away.

A male fox walks by, throws some spare change into the mouse's cup. "Thank you sir, god bless," she shouts.

Then she turns and looks at her again. "If you're here to beg, buzz off. I got this place. It's mine. I got a knife."

"I'm not here to beg," she says. "I came here to get groceries."

"Then why don't you go buy groceries, lady," the mouse woman growls. "I ain't gonna stand here and listen to you chat at me."

She turns away from the mouse and walks through the automatic doors. The store is pretty desolate, very few lights on and very few things on the shelves. Pajaro's is probably going out of business. Society has no need for low-quality grocery stores anymore.

Something went haywire with the humidifier; it almost feels like it's about to rain indoors. She looks up and realizes that the only light is from the sun pouring in the window. The only music is some warbling and muttering on very low volume; she can't make out what the singer is saying. Dark shadows move somewhere beyond her vision. She tentatively steps forward into the store, scanning the aisles.

The first aisle. _Cutlery_, it reads. _Cubiertos_.

Devoid of most products, other than plastic forks and knives. She walks down it, slowly and ceremonially, like she's walking down the aisle at her wedding. She can feel the moisture in the air causing her fur to clump together. Her skin feels electrically charged.

At the very end of the aisle is a display of kitchen knives. There's only one left; a 16" standard blade with a wooden grain hilt. $12.95

Her fingers touch the plastic packaging. Suddenly, all the lights in the store blink on.

She walks back down the aisle, quicker this time. The muttering and warbling never stopped. Like some kind of incantation, summoning something weird inside of her.

There's only one cash-register open. A young parrot sits there, reading the newspaper. He sees her, smiles in that parrot sort of way. Folds the newspaper up and sets it down. His nametag reads "Pedro".

"You find everything you need, miss?" he asks, taking the knife from her. "We don't got much here."

"Yes, I got everything I need," she says, digging in her purse for wallet. She stares at Pedro's shirt. Right at his heart, or where she thinks his heart would be.

"Miss? Miss," she hears, and then raises her eyes. He's staring at her. His eyes are shining with something she hasn't seen in a while.

"What's your name, miss?"

She smiles at him. "It's Amy. Amy Rose."

"Amy Rose. Pretty name."

"Thank you."

"And can I see some I.D., Amy?"

"Yes," and she pulls her I.D. card out, hands it to him.

"All right. The knife is twelve ninety-five."

She wordlessly hands him her credit card. It's Sonic's money, but it's the least the asshole could do for her.

The parrot swipes the card. Gives it back to her with a plastic bag. "Thank you, ma'am."

"Please," she looks up with what she expects is a kind of seductive coyness. "Call me Amy."

Pedro smiles, but his expression somehow reminds her of a politician caught looking for sex in an airport bathroom. "All right. Thank you for your patronage, Amy."

She takes the bag from his hand, silently. Still looking at him and smiling. He nods, still trying to be amiable. She turns and leaves the grocery store.

The pregnant mouse is still standing outside, holding the sign. She tries not to look at her though. Steps forward into the street. Scans the cars parked in the lot.

But there's no sign of a white Camaro.

She hears a snickering coming from behind her. She doesn't need to put two and two together to figure out who it is.

Without turning around, she reaches in her bag, rips the plastic casing off the knife. Pulls it out and turns around.

The mouse is pretending not to look at her.

She walks up to the pregnant bitch, knife glinting. She doesn't make any attempt to appear intimidating. Just walks up to her.

"What you got that for," the mouse starts, but she puts the knife's point right on her belly.

"I want you to leave now," she says. "I want this spot. Or we'll play doctor. Caesarean section. Get it?"

They stand like that for a minute.

Then the mouse frowns. "Fine. All right. I don't want no trouble."

The pregnant mouse puts her sign under her arm. Reaches into her pants. Pulls out her car keys. Walks over to a new-looking S.U.V. in the parking lot. Gets in. Drives out and away.

Still no sign of Sonic.

And she stands where the pregnant mouse once stood, brandishing the knife and watching traffic.

When Sonic comes back for me, she thinks, I'm going to stab him with this knife.

He will come back, she thinks.

He will come back with his stupid white Camaro, and he won't even park or turn the car off so he can follow her if she runs from him, and he'll just pull up to the front of the grocery store where she's standing so she can't escape into the parking lot, and he'll roll down the passenger window, he'll take off his sunglasses so that way he looks even more pathetic and he'll lean out the passenger window and he'll say I'm sorry baby, I'm so sorry I yelled at you, I didn't mean to say those nasty things to you, please come back home.

At least, she thinks he will.

Nobody comes by for a very long time. Nobody even pulls into the parking lot, they just pass by on the highway. The whole area is devoid of other people. There are cars parked in the lot but it doesn't seem like they belong to anyone nearby.

She sniffs the air. It's dry and hot.

How does she feel? She doesn't really know. Exhausted, maybe. The sort of hopeless feeling you get when you realize you've hit an impasse. There's no movement forward until someone else moves forward.

She thinks: Will I die?

She doubts it.

She thinks: Is all this heat bad for the baby?

She doesn't really care. Maybe if it comes out malformed she can get more money for it.

So she waits.

And waits.

And waits.

And waits.

And waits.

Hours pass.

She waits.

The sun begins to set, the sky turning gold.

And she waits.

It slowly gets darker.

And she waits.

The sun finally disappears. And all that's left behind is dark.

The streetlights on the street don't turn on. She surmises that it must some kind of human failure. Somebody asleep at some switch somewhere.

She can feel the knife in her hands. She still holds it out in front of her, like she's ready to tear a hole in space itself.

Her hand slides down the hilt. She stops, moves back up. It feels long. And _hard_.

The night only gets darker.

She waits.

The grocery store's lights turn off, but no one comes out. Not even Pajaro Pedro. She thinks about him, the way his body moved when he took her credit card. The way his eyes twinkled when he asked her what her name was.

_Amy Rose_, she imagines him saying. _What a pretty name, for a pretty girl_.

She thinks about his chest arched above hers. His shoulder muscles rippling as he thrusts into her. His eyes closing, neck craning up as he moans.

She can feel herself getting aroused.

She begins feeling her breasts from the outside of her clothes, rubbing her nipple with the insides of her fingers.

She feels something rubbing her crotch.

Somehow the hilt of the knife found its way there.

She slowly moves it in a circle, rubbing herself.

Thinking of Pajaro Pedro. His fingers, his fingers touching her there, his fingers touching her. Him all around her, rubbing her, touching her, massaging her.

With her fingers, she pulls her panties down slightly, begins rubbing the hilt on her labia, feeling the grain of the wood against her cunt, thinking about Pajaro Pedro's beak. How it would feel to get beak fucked. How it would feel to have his beak inside her.

And she slowly inserts the hilt in, grabbing the blade and pushing it in deeper, forcing it in roughly.

She's moaning. No one around for miles. No one to care about watching her or hearing her.

And she can feel herself contracting around it, spasms, her fingers careful not to cut themselves on the blade.

She starts fucking herself with the hilt, picturing Sonic with his frat t-shirt and dick erect and his smirk, staring at her. She fantasizes about how she would step closer to him, and he'd open his arms, as if to say _I'm sorry baby, come back home_.

Ah.

And she's fantasizing about the way his expression would change when he sees the knife.

Ah.

Fantasizing about the color of his blood on the steel.

AH.

Fantasizing about pushing the blade into his heart.

AHHH.

Fantasizing about the way he would scream.

_YES. YES. YES. AHH, FUCK. _


End file.
